>> For many years we have been deeply suspicious that Social Security would not provide for the needs of the later boomers and could possibly fail so we both went to work for the federal government with a 100% defined benefit plan for me and a partial plan for my husband. <<

This, in a nutshell, is all that needed to be said about your ability to retire -- public pension. The rest of us seem to be on a path of working until we're dead. No matter how many of the right choice some other folks have made, many who made the one choice which now appears to be the *wrong* one in terms of hopes to retire -- working in the private sector -- will be lucky to retire at full SS eligibility age, if at all.